Headache radio this morning on 94 WIP.

Here’s the crux of it:

Jeff McLane went on Angelo Cataldi’s show and was challenged on his assertion that the Eagles’ radio partner had been “muted” in their criticism of the team’s decision to reduce public training camp to one paid session this season.

For context, here’s what McLane recently wrote in the Inquirer:

(Don) Smolenski, through a team spokesperson, declined interview requests from The Inquirer. His appearance with WIP, which has a multi-platform partnership with the Eagles and broadcasts their games, “was a one-time deal,” per the spokesperson.

Fan reaction has been seemingly mixed. While some have taken to social media, online comment boards and talk radio to protest the one open practice, others have said they had no objections and even went so far as to defend the Eagles. WPEN-FM 97.5 The Fanatic has championed the former, while WIP’s airwaves have been suspiciously muted on the subject.

Those passages aren’t exactly scathing, but McLane is suggesting that WIP downplayed the training camp story because of their business relationship with the Birds.

That led to multiple exchanges on today’s show, among them, after the jump:

Cataldi (yelling): If you’re citing sources, if you’re citing sources that I was muted, your sources stink! No one’s ever muted me on this station for 29 years, Jeff. No one’s ever muted me and no one ever will. I will quit. There have been a dozen times, Rhea was a witness – Rhea, have I told management I’ll leave before I let you mute me?

Rhea Hughes: I had to drag you on the air 30 seconds before we were supposed to go on recently because you were not happy with something management did.

Cataldi: Jeff, your sources on me being muted stink.

McLane: I didn’t say that you were muted, I said that WIP was muted. Again, I heard the program director (Spike Eskin) come out in defense of the Eagles stance on this as well, so I think –

Cataldi: Well, Jeff, you’re a good reporter, but not on radio. You’re a good reporter, cover your team but you’re 100% wrong. I would have let them mute this station, if I thought they weren’t defending the fans, they gave me 30 years on the air Jeff and I’m not gonna show my appreciation? I’m gonna take one for the team because we have a business relationship?

So about four minutes into the discussion we had Cataldi yelling at McLane and falling back on his “I represent the fans” nonsense.

At this point, Al Morganti, Keith Jones, and Hughes jumped in to basically defend the Smolenski interview and point out that Cataldi simply doesn’t care about training camp practices, which could have basically ended the discussion right there. Angelo doesn’t think it’s a big deal, other people do, we’ll agree to disagree, the end.

But that doesn’t make for good radio, so the discussion continued:

Cataldi: I’m gonna tell you one thing right now Jeff; you can accuse me of a lot of things. Don’t you ever say that I am muted and that somehow I favor our business arrangement here at WIP over those fans that kept me in business over 30 years. That will never happen while I’m drawing breath in this world.

McLane: Angelo, I love you, and you’re obviously an icon in this city, but again, I said the whole station was muted. And the other thing is that I’ve heard you do tougher interviews before.

Hughes: HE WASN’T MAD AT HIM!

Cataldi: I HAD TO ATTACK HIM BECAUSE YOU WANTED ME TO?

Hughes: That’s what you wanted, you wanted an attack interview. Jeff, if Angelo has no problem with what Don did, why is he supposed to sit here and scream at him?

Ok, a few thoughts here:

  1. Smolenski’s explanation was bullshit. All he had to say was, “it costs money to host public practice at the Linc and we don’t feel like these sessions are important in 2019.”
  2. McLane DOES try to ask a lot of needlessly “tough” questions at Eagles press conferences, which oftentimes result in him getting no real answers in exchange (RE: anything related to the medical staff). We’ve written about this before on the site, and I’ve given him credit for asking questions other reporters won’t ask, but I feel like his approach is sometimes counterproductive. It’s nothing personal at all.
  3. Jeff is on the right side of the argument. Training camp was a fun rite of passage for fans and its demise is disappointing. If Angelo doesn’t care, that’s fine, but don’t downplay how much fans enjoyed Lehigh and West Chester simply because you yourself were indifferent.
  4. Angelo, of course, is a washed up blowhard who openly admitted to not watching Phillies games. He simply repeats the same shit over and over again, like “I speak for the fans and I’ve been on the radio for 30 years and blah blah blah.” He thrives on fake outrage and fake accountability and has been keeping Philadelphia sports fans stupid for the better part of those three decades.
  5. I don’t know if the Eagles regularly tell WIP, ‘hey, please lay off this topic,’ but I’ve been told that the Morning Show is basically off-limits over there and that Angelo has little oversight simply because he brings in huge ratings and big money for the company.

Here’s the full audio, which includes an Andy Bloom story about two-thirds of the way through, followed by Angelo blowing more sunshine up his own ass before taking a phone call with a guy from the Dirty 30 (a group of morons) –